i had such a fun and beautiful day today

that when i got home i felt a little bad for someone who i interviewed a few weeks back

because he and his family have been met with so much sadness and tragedy

and then an ex cop on twitter insulted him

i know we all have good and bad days and parts of days but today was all good

first i got treated to lunch at a steakhouse in burbank my the lovely elise thompson

who has also had some sadness and tragedy in her life.

elise beautifully covered food for me and many other things at LAist and i havent seen her in far too long but i am so glad we connected again

she introduced me to the man in the photograph who i will be telling you more about later because i will be podcasting him very soon.

then i quickly got ready to go to the Cubs Dodgers game which is always such an event

i drove halfway, parked, got out, took the bus the rest of the way

or so i thought, but it turned off which is maybe why things are so bad around dodger stadium

if they even stop busses from going there maybe thats why life is so crazy around there

enjoyed the game, chatted with Doug Smith who i believe has been at the paper for 40 years. maybe longer. he’s still very dapper, in a suit, we talked a lot. he climbs trees!

we talked about sailing. traveling. concerts.

he has only seen one concert his whole life: Joe Cocker at the Hollywood Bowl.
Ben Welch put it all together. he’s got 20 people who report to him now.

met some of the new guns at the Times. solid folk.

the cubs were losing so i went down a level and talked with the people working at the dodger dog stand. one lady had worked there over 20 years. she was having a bad day so she told me everything. the cost of the food, the profit margin, the gross sales, her PIN number. fascinating.

lets just say, the Dodgers have no business selling $19 cans of beer. theyre already rolling in it.

got on the bus home. forgot that i parked back near the stadium, so i took a Lyft back, that guy was great. got home. there was a note from a pretty girl asking where i was.

and thats just a bit of what happened.

and now i wanna work but im tired.

and tomorrow imma interview the Hollywood Blvd Joker

and then take the cats in to get their annual dealie bob.

i really wish i had time to work.

because what we are doing is gooooooood.

today did not suck

there are good people in the world.

i met a man whose wife is in charge of all the busses in LA

i told him i am busblog

i said i would love to interview yr wife if shes down

later he told me my car would cost thousands to fix.

i said look, if she doesnt want to be interviewed

just tell her those of us who ride the busses and subways

say thanks

we love it.

then i showed him my Obama tap card.

he had never seen it before.

i said that was a genius thing that came out of her department.

they should make more.

when i was in high school there was this bus

and it took high school seniors to a college in iowa where you only had to take one class a day for about month.

you were in that class for like three hours a day, maybe four, every day

when you went home you did your homework for a few hours and after that you were done for the day.

cornell college.

then at the end of the month you’d take your finals and then youd get a few days off

next month youd start a new class.

genius.

when i was 17 i knew i wasnt going to no cornell college in iowa, i knew i was coming to californee

but i was intrigued to be able to spend the night in iowa at a real college.

none of my friends from my high school wanted to come with, and that was fine with me.

on the bus i saw these two beautiful girls.

one was named rise the other was tracey. i was shy, but on that bus i said to myself fuckit, im moving to california in a few months, what do i have to lose?

and we talked all the way to dumb cornell college and all the way back the next day.

i was instantly in love with tracey (not pictured), but i kept in touch with both of them via the post. we’d send letters and cards and phone once in a while. what have you.

right before i turned 21 i had some time on my hands and rise was in switzerland at some fancy college and she said come out and we can travel around europe a little.

and sure enough i had made enough money selling tvs on commission that i said, fine!

and rise had this korean roomate named ae, who just happened to be from iowa, and i fell in love with her immediately. pictured. we all traveled around switzerland for a little while then paris. we spoke so much french i started dreaming in french. it was loco.

then the girls had to go back to college and i kept roaming europe. first germany and then scandanavia.

best month of my life until october / early november 2016

and it all started with a bus ride

to nowhere

for no good reason

busses were mellow today

even the poor are taking a few extra days off to get ready for the new year.

i gotta tell you, im not looking forward to it. i dont know why. for some reason i feel like i avoided some really bad shit last year, other than the flu, and im not particularly sure that i can matador ’04. but lets keep our fingers crossed and play to win as opposed to playing not-to-lose.

my sympathies go out to madpony kristin whose college football team nearly pulled a sweet comeback last night on national tv in prime time during a college game played in a dome yet the field was covered in grass. better luck next year baby. and i hate to say it, but southern cal had a better team.

flagrant splinky girl has to be somewhere in a week. i wonder where. you know what a good tv show would be? me and splink living together in a two bedroom house in hollywood. we’d be like the odd couple in that i eat like a pig and she eats granola out of little plastic bags. she likes her little mood music and i still rock out to gwar and suicidal tendencies.

but the creamy center of the reality show would be that together we help each other stop being such homebodies by taking cross country trips in our vw hippiebus and meet bloggers. the model and the madman. next on fox.

so the bus has new prices here in LA. used to be $1.35 which is obviously a rip cuz who the hell has 35 cents, and since the bus doesnt make change, they usually end up getting either 15 cents more than they deserve, or 65 cents.

to make themselves look like theyre giving a discount, they “lower”ed the fare to $1.25. yay, right?

no.

to stick it to the poor, they eliminated transfers, which last year cost a quarter.

so lets say youre taking the 20 east from santa monica and you want to transfer to the 720 rapid to head to los feliz. in the olden days you’d pay $1.60 ($1.35 + $.25), now you have to pay two Full fares ($2.50!)

the MTA tries to play it off by saying, oh no no no, we have a new thing called the Day Pass, where for $3 you can go anywhere you want all day.

dicks.

and to top it off, for those of us who use bus passes, the rate went from $42 to $52, which in some cases gives the regular commuter No Discount for paying a month in advance.

take this month, for example. theres 15 commuting days since 1/1 and 1/2 were holidays. if one would get a Day Pass for those 15 days, that would be $45.

what they are doing is punishing those who would prefer the convienence of one pass as opposed to forking over $3 every damn morning.

fuck you, mta.

in a town like LA, especially in a town like LA where gridlock is a few years away, they should be bending over backwards to encourage people to use public transportation and to carpool and to get rides from hot chicks, not charging extra for bus passes.

id ask Gov. Arnold for relief but he’s too busy revoking the car tax for his many Hummers.

sutter + ev + blue cad

i think i have a cavity

when you ride the red express bus down wilshire and you know you want to get on an orange regular bus at la brea, you start hoping for the screen.

the screen is a yellow light, a slow moving car in the far-right hand lane, pedestrians crossing on the right – anything to slow the momentum of the orange bus before your red bus passes it.

if your karma is in disarray like mine is, the red bus will stop at la brea the same time that two orange busses just pull away from the curb. but karma, just like anything, can be adjusted at any moment. this morning about 5 blocks before la brea, i spotted a slow moving orange bus a block ahead of us. by us i mean me and the passengers of the express red bus, including one tall skinny girl who’s email address i had received a mere five minutes previous.

yes, The tall skinny girl.

at highland i saw the screen, it was a passenger who had hailed the orange bus which meant it had to pull over and pick the nice lady up. our red bus sped by.

earlier i had tapped the arm of TSG and i said, “i see you nearly every morning and i dont even know your name.”

it’s evelyn.

hi, my name is tony.

the problem with screens is, sometimes you get screened, there was a UPS truck in our lane that wanted to get over. when my red express bus dropped me off at labrea the orange bus had caught up and was arriving across the street, just dying to see me make a run for it so it could take off like a hot rod. so i played it cool and walked west as though i had forfeited this morning’s challenge. the orange bus had won. congratulations, public servant.

i did look over my shoulder to see if the bus driver had popped open a bottle of champagne, but instead i saw that it had lowered its handicap step, a man in a wheelchair wished entrance. i had two options: try to run east across the intersection once the light had changed to green, or run 3 1/12 blocks west and try to beat it to its next stop.

i chose the latter. there was no way it could beat me three blocks.

it was at that moment that i noticed my cavity.

i havent had a cavity since i was in grade school. i knew the bus couldnt beat me so i walked. ahead i saw that an old man was sitting at the next busstop, a perfect screen for me and i knew that if i ran a little and walked a little i would be able to catch my little orange bus and ride the half mile like a human being.

i heard the orange bus take off from la brea, i started running the first block and i felt good. i passed the homeless man who slept in front of the Office Depot and i didnt even notice him. i didnt notice how black he was, how big he was, how cold he must have been last night when temperatures dipped below freezing, i didnt notice the empty bottles of rubbing alcohol he had lined up neatly next to him, i didnt notice that his one thin blanket had failed to cover his callused naked left foot, i had my eye on the old man at the busstop with the cane who obviously wished to be picked up by the speeding #20 orange bus that was about to pass me, the young man running down wilshire.

me and the bus approached the busstop at approximately the exact time and the old man just stared ahead. no signal to the driver who makes $50k, no wave of his cane, no gesture from his non-cane hand, which meant no screen. the bus accellerated and sped off.

so i walked the remaining half mile. as i should. as i do every morning. i knew my boss would frown at me as i entered the agency a few minutes late. i knew he would assume i was continuing to be the rebellous young hotshot superstar agent, probably hungover, probably smelling of perfumes from women met at a new bar in hollywood. but what is there to do other than walk and pass another homeless man, this one lying on his back in front of a Blockbuster video store, seemingly dead from afar but obviously snoozing when you get close.

pigeons bathed in our fountains only a block from the video store in question, and as i turned the corner i saw the lineup of well-dressed fellow tenants in our office complex. seems the building throws a nice Christmas breakfast a week before the holiday to give thanks. a four peice jazz band played a mellow version of “Jingle Bell Rock” as i slid through the metal detectors next to the doors of our anonymous luxury hollywood skyscraper.

and i realized, yes, i really do have a cavity.

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i got u2

u2 at the vma

tickets, look what they’re going for on eBay with 4 days left. am i tempted to sell my pair? tempted isnt the word.

oh wait, yes, tempted is the word.

today i hate the bus. today i want to get a car. today i want to flush out everything bad in my life. i want to flush everything that isnt perfect out of my life. i want to earn twice as much, i want to wear half as less. i want to grow my hair twice as big and dye it red or just bleach it. im not happy. i was late to work.